One banana, two bananas, three bananas! More! Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more! Making a Soft Toy is like that. Take it one step or ‘banana’ at a time and you will get a whole ‘bunch’ done!

Ditsy Distraction Spoonflower Fabric

Ditsy can be distracting! Ditsy v Organised. Seamless Repeats! What does it all mean? Fabric of course!!

How many seconds, minutes or hours of my life have been consumed by looking at fabric?

Trying to figure out where the ‘Repeat’ is occurring…. discerning what ‘works’ & what doesn’t! BTW it is impossible to be totally objective in my appraisals & I end up being subjective based on my own preferences. I love order & symmetry!

Ditsy is hard when you like order & balance!!

But what is “Ditsy”? It was explained to me recently this way by a member of the Spoonflower Fans Group on Facebook:

Ditsy is “a small scattered repeat”, you should be able to look at a ditsy design and find no obvious “pattern” or organization to the repeat.

This is definitely NOT Ditsy! An obvious pattern will appear when it is repeated!

See what happens when it is repeated..

I can see an obvious pattern can you?

….now I was totally confused! How do I make it Ditsy?

Suggestions were made including You could recreate it with lizards that are:

1- the same size instead of being different sizes,

2- fewer lizards, and

3- creating an alternate element to mix in with the lizards (bubbles, swirls, a few zig-zag lines, etc)

hmmmm….

or a suggestion by another member: “Place the large lizards randomly, but evenly spaced. Then fill in with the smaller ones.”

It is feeling a little too ‘random’ to me! I like order & balance can I make myself do this? Why am I doing this you may be wondering seeing as the 1st design is quite alright & I do like it. Well the reason is there is Spoonflower Contest coming up that I thought I might enter.

Here is the brief for the Ditsy Lizards: Do you know why lizards stick their tongues out at a rapid pace? Make a ditsy design from our favorite creature that smells by tasting the air around them with their tongue! Previews will be sized as a swatch (8″ x 8″). Deadline for entry is Tuesday, September 8th, 2015. Voting will open Thursday, September 10th, 2015.

Seeing that there was a Contest for Lizards made me think about a sewing pattern that I have that is currently just scrap paper. I decided to take a creative break from the very slooooooow “Quick Brown Fox” Sewing Pattern PDF that I am supposed to be working on and tackle not only the Contest but also get those scrap paper pieces digitised!!

First I worked on the Sewing Pattern shapes then on the Lizards & Geckos for the Fabric

I figured I could use the underbelly shape combined with the tail & limbs and make some lizard shapes. Of course I had to have every imaginable combination didn’t I (as seen in the examples above)!!! Fat tail, short tail, long tail…Long fingers, short fingers, round fingertips, smooth finger tips…you get the idea right? This is how my brain works & why everything takes me soooooo long!! But it is satisfying when I do accomplish what I set out to achieve!

How do you do: randomly but evenly spaced at the same time? Argh!!

So I tried

Like this? Is this ‘random’ & ‘even’ at the same time?

The answer to the question was: “My suggestion, make those lizards smaller, maybe by 1/3, but keep them about where they are and that many of them, and they should look more ditsy that way.” Then the penny dropped…..smaller like the flowers shown to me during the discussion….I think I understand now!

It was further clarified by this: “For ditsy the design elements should not be symmetrical or appear to be in any sort if grid or lined up arrangement anywhere on your repeat. You should not be able to easily tell where the repeat lies. It’s very difficult to do properly.On the last example you shared the four lizards keeping it from being ditzy are the four overlapping the edges. Rotate each to different angles and you should be there.“

So more thinking more ‘playing’ with the shapes I already had… FYI using Adobe Illustrator CS5 makes it quite easy to turn the visibility of layers off & on & also makes it easy to reposition, rescale or rotate the Lizards & Geckos.

I was thinking I was just about ‘done’ with Ditsy!

Swatch 8″ x 8″ + Staggered repeat + Regular repeat

I wasn’t sure so I asked in the group again: “Do I need more lizards & Geckos or is this enough? BTW It works okay (almost) with regular & staggered repeats but I can see the joins!”

I can see the blank spaces in between & they are still to obvious although the Regular repeat is better that the Staggered one…hmmm maybe I need to keep what works i.e. the top middle & lower rows meet quite well across the image but not vertically. Perhaps a rotation of everything is needed! Plus “does it need anything to make the gaps between the squares less obvious..a lizard chopped into two parts to span the gaps?” This suggestion was then made: “A lizard( lizards) that span the gap would make it even better for purists of seamless repeat!”

But how to have one spanning the gap & use either the staggered repeat OR the regular? That would mean choosing only one sort of repeat wouldn’t it? Unless I can have another lost tail Lizard..???

So I stole some more time in the evening after the dishes were done & laundry folded & put away!

Now I am ‘done’ with Ditsy! Woo Hoo & I actually ‘Like’ it too!

So now I think I am ‘done’ with all this ditsy stuff!!! Phew I survived & I think I actually quite like this style of fabric…